Grays Harbor and the Aberdeen waterfront
— the harbor the timber built, then left.
Not only on a wall.
“Aberdeen sits at the eastern end of Grays Harbor, where the Chehalis and Wishkah rivers reach the estuary and the estuary reaches the Pacific. The harbor was named for Captain Robert Gray of Boston, who entered it in May 1792 aboard the Columbia Rediviva. The waterfront held one of the largest sawmill complexes on the west coast in the early twentieth century. Most of the mills are gone, but the docks still load logs for export, and the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport keeps the tall ship Lady Washington moored when she is home. Half a million shorebirds pass through the mudflats at Bowerman Basin each April.
Grays Harbor and the Aberdeen waterfront, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Grays Harbor is a Pacific estuary on the southwest coast of Washington, about a hundred miles southwest of Seattle. The Chehalis and Wishkah rivers empty into the harbor at the city of Aberdeen, which sits at the head of the bay along with its twin city Hoquiam. The harbor was charted by the American merchant captain Robert Gray on May 7, 1792, aboard the Columbia Rediviva, and named for him. Aberdeen incorporated in 1890 and grew on the back of the timber industry, reaching a peak population of about 22,000 in 1930. Current population is roughly 16,000. The Port of Grays Harbor remains an active deep-water log-export port.
The estuary covers roughly 90 square miles at high tide, one of the larger estuaries on the U.S. west coast. The Chehalis River drains a basin of about 2,500 square miles into the harbor's eastern end. Bowerman Basin, the mudflat at the harbor's western edge near Hoquiam, became the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge in 1990. The basin sits on the Pacific Flyway and hosts up to half a million migrating shorebirds in late April and early May, including Western sandpipers, dunlin, and dowitchers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages access from a short trail off Airport Way, on the edge of Bowerman Field.
The Grays Harbor Historical Seaport in Aberdeen is the working dock for the tall ship Lady Washington, the official ship of Washington State, with deckhand tours and sailing excursions when she is home. The Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge at Bowerman Basin is reached from a short trail off Airport Way, about ten minutes west of downtown Aberdeen by car. The refuge is open from dawn to dusk daily, though the shorebird migration in late April and early May is the visit. State Route 105 follows the harbor's south shore to Westport and the harbor mouth; State Route 109 follows the north shore to Ocean Shores.